Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [89]
‘Never touch them,’ he said with a wry grin. ‘They keep going off. People get hurt.’
‘Concealed weapons are standard issue when entering an alien boardroom,’
Natalie urged. ‘Doctor, you’ve got to carry this. Mark Barrington and Dave Milligan are dead because of these people. I know there’s not a snowball’s 170
chance in hell that you’re actually going to use it, but don’t go all politically correct on us. We’re fighting a war.’
It had been a long time since anyone had been so forthright with the Doctor on the subject of weapons. He weighed the gun in his hand, took it out of its wrappings and stared at the piece of cold, hard steel in his palm. It looked harmless and dormant, like a child’s toy. ‘Just so we understand each other,’ he said at last. ‘This goes against every principle I’ve ever stood for. Everything I believe in.’
Natalie appeared to understand. ‘Come back alive,’ she said, before suddenly realising that she had forgotten something.’ Hang on a second,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back with the hand grenades in a moment . . . ’
‘Hand grenades?’ shouted the Doctor, horrified.
‘Standard issue . . . ’ repeated Natalie, leaving them.
‘Odd girl that,’ Lethbridge-Stewart said, pocketing his weapon. ‘Talks a lot of sense for someone with such a limited intellect.’
‘The problem with you, Brigadier, is that time left you behind.’ The Doctor handed his gun to him. ‘You’ll look after this for me, perhaps?’
‘I don’t have a Time Lord’s luxury of immaculate perception,’ noted the Brigadier, picking up his overcoat. ‘But I know how the world turns, Doctor.
And it isn’t always for the better.’
The garage was in sight now, as dusk settled over the harsh desert.
‘Nearly there,’ wheezed Paynter, who had finally come to a stop.
Several dozen yards behind him Tegan was doubled up in exhaustion, her hands on her knees, trying to shake the dizziness from her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said at last, though the pain in her chest barely allowed the words to reach Paynter. ‘You go on.’
‘Come on,’ Paynter shouted. ‘Stop giving me grief. Do you want to get out of this poxy desert or not?’
Tegan stood, shakily, and limped a few paces towards him. He wore a po-faced expression of gritty determination that she, in the present circumstances, found utterly offensive. Why didn’t the big ugly sod just keel over and hurt like she did.
She was starting to go off him again.
‘You don’t have to prove anything to me you know,’ she said as she reached the scowling Paynter. ‘That macho nonsense doesn’t impress me one little bit.’
If Captain Paynter was feigning disinterest, he was making a pretty poor job of the deception. ‘Let’s just get home,’ he said sullenly. ‘This place is starting to really depress me.’
∗ ∗ ∗
171
It had taken Turlough several hours to engage Eva in conversation again. He was, he felt, beginning to gain her confidence. Occasionally she would walk into his room and talk for a few minutes, before leaving to answer the telephone, or perform some other task of world-shattering importance. But she always came back to him.
‘I’d have thought it was beneath your dignity, to get a baby-sitting job like this,’ Turlough said.
Eva spent a considerable time mulling over this. She sat on the bed and took off her shoes, propping herself up on one elbow in a pose of casual disinterest.
‘We all, in life, have to do things that are unpleasant,’ she said after a moment.
‘It is sometimes necessary. For the greater good.’
‘Blah, blah, blah. World domination . . . ’ Turlough was tired of the rhetoric.
‘Listen,’ he said, thumping the plastic bucket that had been dumped next to him for his toiletry needs. ‘I’m sore and I’m cramped. This isn’t the most comfortable floor in the world, you know. And I want to use the bog.’
Eva nodded towards the bucket. ‘If you’re worried about privacy . . . ’ she began.
‘I’m worried about dignity,